Jerusalem, City of Peace

Thursday night, we saw the view of the city from Mt. Scopus. Friday morning our journey began at the Haas Promenade, in Hebrew know as the tayelet. This is a vantage point overlooking the expanse from the ancient city to the old city, Mount Scopus, the mount of olives and beyond. This promenade was built in the late 1980's.

We then took a brief tour of Jerusalem, moving seamlessly through East and West Jerusalem. We happened upon a stunning wedding couple taking photographs at the Wohl Rose Garden, a public garden on the sloping hill below the Knesset at the foot of the Israeli Supreme Court. I think we were surprised to learn it was a Palestinian Couple which Amir noted due to the bride's most beautiful and unusual wedding gown in which she was covered in lace like a cape from head to toe.

From there we went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial campus. We learned this was not a museum, as it contained many buildings - the world's largest repository of information, research, archives, children' memorial, museum, and more. It was consciously placed near the national cemetery of Har Herzl, like our Arlington National Cemetery. The Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC teaches history and is therefore placed near the Smithsonian. But for Jews there is an intimate link between the loss of six million lives in Europe and those soldiers who gave up their lives fighting for Israel's survival here, and this gives the Yad Vashem a different Gestalt than our Holocaust Museum.

In describing Yad Vashem, less is more, except to say that its name gives a glimmer of this place in which life, death, and eternity meet. A Yad in Hebrew, literally a hand, is a monument or a marker that goes on a grave. Shem, literally a name, is a memorial and a remembrance. We are taught in Judaism that our names contain our soul, our essence, if you will, for all eternity. With so many murdered, with no grave and no marker, this then is our collective grave. This is our monument and memorial to remind us that those who perished will never be forgotten.

There is no easy transition from what we saw to the next part of our journey, but as Amir reminded us, Jewish life is about moving forward.

Next we went to the Israel Museum where we saw the Dead Sea Scrolls. These scrolls are the oldest extant documents of the existence of the Jewish Bible. Evidence of every book of the Bible was found except for Esther. There were also additional Apochraphyl books that were found by a Jordanian shepherd boy in Qumran.

Finally we attended services at Har El synagogue. Har El translates "the mountain of God." It is located on Shmuel Hanagid Street in Jerusalem. This is a Reform Congregation led by Rabbi Ada Zavidov, a native Israeli. he is the first woman to serve as a congregational Rabbi in the history of Jerusalem.

Shira

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Location:Jerusalem